Manila, June 24 -- Social workers, who serve as the lifeline of the nation's humanitarian and welfare response, must be provided stronger institutional support, including regularization, according to Senator Loren Legarda.

Legarda said social workers are not just indispensable. They are also irreplaceable.

"In times of need, they are the first to respond and the last to leave. Their service is not quiet -- it is courageous, visible, and deeply transformative," Legarda said in a news release on Tuesday.

Citing her decades of collaboration with social workers from the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) and with provincial and municipal social welfare offices, she emphasized how their work sustains the delivery of medical...